


Part II, The Edge of the Blade

by DirisTheHidden



Series: The Light Between Stars [2]
Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Character death isn't permanent, Crucible (Destiny), Dreadnought, Exploration, Gen, Hive, Lore - Freeform, She's immortal she'll be fine, Spooky, Taken (Destiny) - Freeform, Titan (Moon), Training, Warlock - Freeform, researching the darkness, void
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-17
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:54:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24755851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DirisTheHidden/pseuds/DirisTheHidden
Summary: The new Guardian Diris has survived her first battle to make it to the Tower. Though Ikora Rey is concerned about Diris's ability to master her new powers, the new Guardian is determined to prove her worth, and in the process buries herself too deep in investigations of Hive rituals.
Series: The Light Between Stars [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1719304
Kudos: 8





	1. Fuel without Fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The new Guardian Diris has survived her first battle to make it to the Tower. She meets Ikora Rey, who is intrigued and concerned by the extent of Diris's connection to the void, as demonstrated in training crucible battles.

Diris fidgeted as the ship’s deceleration pulled on her body. Her Ghost Idisi did not help settle her—their tiny clusters of plates rustled with agitation and they paced, or rather drifted, around the perimeter of the mostly empty cargo hold. 

Mumbled radio chatter reached them from the cockpit, mostly drowned out by the roar of the engines. The pilot called back to them after a moment. “We’ve been given approval to land! Hold on tight, I’m bringing us around!”

The pilot whipped the ship in an arc that must have felt smooth and well-practiced in the cockpit, but Diris cradled Idisi as the movement launched her off the crate she had been using as a seat. She tumbled into the far wall of the hold as the ship shuddered to a stop.

“We’re here!” the pilot announced. “Welcome to the Tower, Guardian.”

Diris and Idisi collected themselves, and the woman wiggled into the tiny corridor that connected the cockpit to the cargo hold. Most of the floor slid away into a ramp that granted access to the landing pad.

A flood of fresh air whipped her hair and brought the tang of oil and engine grease. Behind her, she heard Idisi mention something about payment to the pilot, but he dismissed the idea. “The Vanguard make sure we have what we need. Besides, it’s good to see new Guardians coming in again.”

“What did he mean?” Diris asked her Ghost as they disembarked.

“You remember I mentioned the Red War on the journey?”

“Yes.” Diris could imagine it to some degree: Red-suited Cabal sweeping through the Last City and placing a great shield over the Traveler to contain its Light. One Guardian found a way to regain their Light and freed the Traveler, Idisi had explained with reverence. Diris could picture these events, but to have experienced them would have been very different. “I think I understand. If the Traveler’s Light was blocked, there could be no new Guardians.”

“Precisely. Your awakening and arrival are another demonstration of the Traveler’s resurgence. Come, I cannot wait to introduce you to Ikora.”

Idisi guided their Guardian through the busy hangar, weaving easily through the crowds. Beneath its roof, many ships came and went, and a constant flow of people swept around them, making deliveries and performing maintenance work. Idisi had explained that the Tower stood on part of the great defensive wall that encircled the enormous City. Diris strained to find a gap in the activity that would grant a view of the City itself, but to no avail.

The Ghost watched her, blue eye sparkling. “Hurry up! These stairs will take us topside.”

Diris scrambled after them. They passed a row of repair docks for smaller vehicles—sparrows, Idisi called them—and then an empty docking bay that revealed rich forests outside the City, far, far below. Then another staircase carried them over a metal bridge onto a wide and bustling deck.

And there was the Last City and, stretching into the sky, the Traveler.

Diris gaped as she slipped through the crowd to reach a bannister.

“Wait for me!” Idisi squeaked, bobbing and weaving after her through the sea of people.

Hundreds of feet below, myriad buildings nestled right up to the wall on which she stood and stretched away into invisibility in the distance. Highways wove like vines among them, and streams of hovering vehicles carried civilians to and fro across the City’s face.

Above, the great white sphere of the Traveler curved up until it vanished into the clouds above. The Red War had not been kind to it. Great pieces of its shell were missing, but they still orbited the sphere with streams of smaller debris that glittered as the sun hit them. The Traveler still held.

“It’s amazing,” she gasped.

Idisi’s plates whirled. “Isn’t it!?”

“There are so many people.”

“So many civilians to protect.”

She nodded. The Traveler drew her eyes ever upward; everything about her felt its pull. Its gravitational field tugged in her chest. Did the other Guardian’s feel it? Diris was not certain she liked the nagging ache.

“Where is Ikora Rey?”

“This way!” Idisi zipped off across the deck once more. Several flights of stairs, metal mesh affording an excellent view of the long fall beneath Diris’s feet, brought them down to a series of hallways set into the concrete panels of the wall.

The Ghost halted in front of a pair of tall doors inlaid with brass in the shape of a crest—a shield marked with geometric patterns sat in a disk that radiated lines like beams of light.

Idisi activated a small panel with a beam of light. “Vanguard Ikora, I have a new Guardian here.”

The doors slid open immediately.

The office within was utilitarian and yet elegant: concrete floors and walls in smooth lines, and a dark wood desk situated in front of an enormous window with a view of the forest outside the wall.

In front of it, an imposing woman rose from her seat. Her brown skin was dark and rich, her hair cropped close to the scalp. She wore robes in shades of purple and clasped her hands behind her back. Tidy, straight-backed, reserved.

Idisi trilled at her and Diris stepped into the office. Ikora Rey smiled. “Welcome to the Tower, Guardian. It is very good to see you.” She keyed something into the console on her desk. “Zavala, Cayde, would you come to my office, please? I have someone I would like to introduce to you.”

Diris stiffened at the thought of more people and mirrored Ikora, gripping her hands behind her back.

“Please do not worry—you will not be tested, evaluated, or ordered to do anything. Not yet, anyway. First, we simply want to help you settle in. And I know they will also be excited to meet you. I am Ikora Rey, warlock vanguard and commander of the Hidden. But you can learn more about them later. Who are you?”

Idisi immediately piped up. “I am Idisi, and this is Diris.”

“Diris…” Ikora quirked a flawless eyebrow. “Is that Eliksni?”

The Guardian nodded.

“An unusual choice, but—it is a pleasure to meet you, Diris. Might I ask why you selected such a name?”

“I actually have a report here for you that might go some way toward answering that question,” Idisi said.

“Oh?”

The Ghost chirped and Ikora’s Ghost responded in kind. Ikora pulled out a datapad and scrolled through the document that Idisi had composed in Diris’s stead. Diris found words insufficient to summarize the events. Ikora frowned as she scrolled through the document, then her eyebrows shot up.

“There is a faction of Fallen who seek peace with human settlements?”

Idisi nodded. “As I have noted there, a captain named Kivraks led this group and acquitted himself well.”

“He saved us,” Diris said quietly.

That drew a smile from Ikora. “So I see in your report. The House of Dawn…We will have to keep an eye on them. However,” she fixed them both with her sharp eyes, “do you feel that it was wise to leave a group of Fallen with free access to a civilian town?”

“Under the circumstances,” Idisi said, plates ruffled slightly with indignation, “we felt that there was no better choice than to ask for their help if we wanted to stave off the attack. And we have a contact in the settlement—a young woman who is a skilled and observant fighter. If she notices anything is amiss, we will know.”

“There is no need for that, but I thank you,” Ikora said. “I will install one of my Hidden there to monitor the situation and make contact with the House of Dawn on our behalf, if it seems appropriate. Ah, Commander Zavala, Cayde. Please come in.”

Diris took in every unfamiliar aspect of the new arrivals. 

The first clanked slightly as he walked, protected by a fortress of armor. One particularly tall plate of metal mostly shielded his face until he turned to greet her. Diris’s eyes widened at his gently blue skin, rippling like moonlight on water, and the bright eyes that faintly radiated light. His shaven head only accented his stillness and dignified bearing. He did not seem like the type to smile much, but his eyes were glad as he held out a hand to her. Diris accepted it, surprised at its warmth, though she supposed there was no reason to expect it would be otherwise.

“You are most welcome here, Guardian.” His voice was resonant and warm. “I am Zavala, titan vanguard.”

“Wow, the first new Guardian since the Red War!” the other chimed in, with a voice tinny like Idisi’s and yet very distinct with its nasal twang. He was entirely metal, an android with brightly-colored faceplates and a svelte build. His mouth flashed orange when he spoke. “Welcome to the Tower, kid. Name’s Cayde, hunter extraordinaire.”

“And our hunter vanguard,” Zavala cut in.

“Under protest.”

Ikora cleared her throat. “This is Diris and her Ghost Idisi. They have just arrived—and have already handled an issue with Fallen in an outlying EDZ settlement.”

“Really?” Zavala looked Diris over again.

“I am sending their report over to you now.”

“Can you summarize it for us now?” Cayde asked. “Briefly?”

Ikora gestured to Diris and Idisi. The Ghost accepted her offer. “We exposed a group of humans who had hired a team of Fallen to interrupt a human-Fallen peace treaty and then helped fight off a small invasion.”

“ _Humans_ hired them?” Cayde gasped.

“A human-Fallen peace treaty?” Zavala looked taken aback.

“It’s all in the report,” Idisi said.

Cayde’s already bright eyes flashed. “Nice work there, rookie.” He gave Diris a friendly punch in the arm and sidled up to Ikora. “Can I keep her? Please?” He made an attempt at puppy eyes before being immediately distracted by some delicate metal instrument nearby.

Ikora reclaimed the object with practiced ease. “Unfortunately, you may not keep them. Diris has already demonstrated an aptitude for warlock void abilities.”

Cayde pouted but Zavala looked up from the report, which he had been reading on his own datapad. “An unusual school of Light abilities, especially for someone so newly awakened.”

“Yes, and a difficult school to learn to control and strengthen,” Ikora said. “Here is what I propose: Diris and Idisi, we have space for you here in one of our dormitories. You may stay in the Tower while we evaluate your skills and ensure you have completed basic training. I will take you on as my pupil, to guide you in developing your new abilities. We can re-evaluate as you improve.” She turned to the other vanguards. “Is this agreeable?”

Zavala nodded, but Cayde waved the idea away. “Don’t coddle her too much! Nothing substitutes field experience. Let the kid get out there.” He had somehow gotten his hands on a small artifact of some kind and was rolling it between his fingers.

Ikora snatched it away. “Voidwalking is not like gunslinging, Cayde.”

“Well, what does the kid think?”

All eyes turned to Diris and she swallowed, trying to unstick her throat. Idisi read the answer from her, though. “Yes, we are very excited to start training.”

Cayde raised his eyebrows, the metal plates rearranging the architecture of most of his forehead. “Not a talker, eh? Fair enough.”

“Then if there are no objections,” Ikora went on, “it seems we are in agreement. Cayde, _put it down_. Thank you both, you’ll have plenty more opportunities to see and speak with Diris.”

Cayde replaced yet another artifact and swaggered off under Ikora’s glare.

“And he wonders why you never invite him into your office,” Zavala mused, then he smiled. “Welcome again, Diris. I will see you soon for combat drills, I am sure.” He nodded to Ikora and departed.

Ikora restored her varied artifacts and tools to their usual places, then clasped her hands behind her once more. “How are you feeling?”

Idisi immediately accepted their duty to fill the silence, chattering excitedly about finding their Guardian at last. Diris herself faded away into her own thoughts. 

How _did_ she feel? Did such a question matter? She was pulled between the Traveler and the void she had touched, and could not be sure that those forces were even different. Diris brushed her fingers over the piece of paper in her pocket—a portrait drawn by the woman who had inhabited this body before her, Irina, of her best friend Nera.

Diris felt like the shadow cast by the bright gleam of Irina’s life.

When she looked up, Ikora stood directly in front of her. She pressed a gentle hand to Diris’s shoulder. “All Guardians come in contact with the void, but not all take away such a large piece of it. You have touched it in an unusual and potentially dangerous way. But it can also be a Guardian’s most powerful weapon. There is much for us to talk about, but for now you should settle in.” The warlock broke away, resuming her seat. She keyed a few things into her desk console. “I am sending Idisi all of the necessary information regarding lodgings, a modest allowance, supplies, weapons, and armor. You will have access to our archives as you wish.” Ikora smiled. “Get some rest. Tomorrow, we’ll get to work.”

Diris nodded and Idisi led the way from the office. At the door, Diris half-turned and caught Ikora’s eyes again—unreadable, but laser-focused on the new Guardian. Unnerved by the force of it, Diris hurried to catch up with her Ghost.

The dormitories sat deep within lower areas of the Tower. They were not elegant, but, as Idisi explained, not many Guardians lived in the Tower. Those who did made an effort to keep out of the way of civilians who lived and worked alongside them. 

Some Guardians opted simply for a bunk in one of the communal rooms. Some twenty snoozed or waved to Diris from their beds. But there were some single-occupant rooms, and Diris gladly accepted an unoccupied one. There were no windows, only a vent to bring fresh air, but the cot, table, and locker were enough. Diris pinned the portrait of Nera over the bed.

“What would you like to do now?” Idisi asked. “It is early, we could wander the Tower, go down into the City, get to know—.”

“Ikora said I would have access to Tower archives?”

Idisi’s eye twinkled. “Yes. What would you like to see?”

“Everything.”

“Hmm.” The Ghost clicked and whirred, calculating. “It would take approximately a century to show you the entire contents of the archive. Where would you like to start?”

Diris thought of the fragile peace blooming between at least some Fallen and humans. She wondered how Kivraks had come to be who he was. “I want to learn about the Eliksni.” 

“Then let’s get started.”

* * *

Diris reemerged from the dormitories in the morning freshly invigorated by a burst of Idisi’s Light. She carried new weapons and wore new, plain armor—an ankle-length robe, perhaps better called a long coat, dominated her garb; her gloves and boots were fairly simple, and she wore a band on her left bicep. 

Diris’s mind buzzed with new information as Idisi led the way across the Tower to the meeting point Ikora had designated. Overnight, the Ghost had walked Diris through centuries of Eliksni history, from the time before the Traveler—the Great Machine, to them—had arrived, to its departure for Sol and Earth, and eventually to Twilight Gap and the building of the wall. It had surprised Diris to see the Vanguard figure in so many of these histories. It had not quite sunk in that Guardians could be, truly, immortal. Now she could visualize it.

Ikora did not await them at the meeting point, an unoccupied corner of the Tower next to a transport ship landing zone. Instead, eleven other Guardians milled about, some yawning away sleep and others as freshly renewed as Diris was. Their armor was distinctive—perhaps keyed to their specific abilities, as she suspected of her own. But where Diris’s armor was unornamented blue, their gear was all colorful and elegant. Three others, who were dressed in long coats like hers, must also be warlocks, but their arm bands projected holographic symbols in bright colors. 

Five titans wore armor that resembled Zavala’s—thick-plated and bulky, designed to take and deliver heavy hits. Their ornaments, decorative banners strapped to their waists, fluttered in brilliant designs. 

The remainder must be hunters like Cayde. They kept mostly to themselves; the hoods of their cloaks were down, but their armor was otherwise sleek and tight for clean movements. They seemed to like flipping their knives as they talked.

A few other Guardians glanced at Diris, registering her unmarked armor. She stood out obviously as inexperienced. 

Before anyone could approach her, however, a collection of red-plated robots and another titan strode toward the group. His white and orange helmet had only one horn.

“Good morning, Guardians!” he boomed jovially, to which everyone intoned, “Good morning, Lord Shaxx.” The titan rubbed his hands together with glee. “Are we all ready for a day in the Crucible?”

His fellow titans responded with loud whoops and hoots, but Diris was glad she was not the only one to remain silent.

“Good!” Shaxx nodded and then he turned his head to fix his gaze—though his eyes were masked by the helm—on Diris. “I would like everyone to extend a hearty, Crucible welcome to our newest Guardian, who is joining us for training today at the behest of the Vanguard. Please make her feel welcome, but don’t go too easy on her!” He laughed heartily. “On that note, be advised that Ikora Rey herself will be observing the matches today. Remember that she is a Crucible champion herself, a true terror, so get out there and show her what you’re made of!” 

Amid more Titan whoops, Diris heard the anxious sighs of her fellow warlocks.

“Now then,” Shaxx said,” our transport is here. All aboard for Bannerfall!”

A transport ship hovered nearby, just off the edge of the landing zone. The Guardians around Diris began to disappear into swirls of glittering light.

“Oh,” Idisi said in the tone that, Diris was learning, meant they had forgotten to tell her something important, “We are going to transmat.”

“What?”

“You’ll be fine!”

Diris felt distinctly _not fine_ as her body seemed to come unmoored from reality. She lost the sensation of her feet against the ground and then the swirl of light blinded her. When it cleared, she stood on board the ship, in the crowded cabin.

“See?” Idisi said, but Diris scowled.

One seat remained open, and Diris shuffled toward it. Another warlock occupied the seat beside it; they locked eyes, each gave a nod of recognition, and the stranger gestured to the empty spot. Diris took as the ship whipped off over the City. There were no windows, but a projected feed from exterior cams provided a similar view. Diris watched the scarred underbelly of the Traveler as they passed beneath it.

The stranger had been sizing her up. “I’m Zed.”

Diris met their eyes—dark, set into cool brown skin beneath thick eyebrows. Her hair was a deep brown, shaved on one side and long on the other. “Diris,” she answered quietly.

“Have you ever been in the Crucible?”

Diris shook her head.

Zed sighed. “Well, we’re going to be doing six-on-six combat drills. Capture points and defend them. Kill the enemy team on sight.” Diris gaped at her and Zed shrugged. “Their Ghosts will rez them. What’s your attunement?”

“Void,” Idisi answered for the Guardian.

Zed arched an eyebrow but nodded. “Weapons?”

Diris hefted the new auto rifle, six-shooter, and wide-bladed sword.

Zed let out a quick breath through her nose. “Well, it’s better than a kick in the head. Stay with me, I’ll show you how this works.” She gestured toward a Titan at the far end of the cabin, goofing off with his fellows. “Arjun is our sniper, he’ll take care of you. You’re new and your weapons are mostly mid-range. Don’t use your sword, let others contest heavy ammo when it’s available. Stay out of mid and just get what hits you can. Work on building up your energy. Only use the hand cannon if someone pushes you—remember, two headshots and a punch should take down anyone with full shields. Find a defensible position with an angle on at least two lanes. Don’t corner yourself—keep Arjun at your back if you can. When you’re ready to drop a void bomb, just call out over comms and we can tell you where we need it.”

Diris nodded and Zed turned away to check her gear. 

A beep signaled that Idisi had received a notification. “Do you want me to accept the fireteam invitation?” they asked Diris over their private connection.

The Guardian glanced at the warlock beside her, shrugged, and nodded. The older warlock seemed willing to mentor her, and Diris was glad of it.

The ship slowed and Shaxx’s thunderous voice made Diris jump. “Prep for transmat, everyone! Get out there and make me proud!”

Why did it feel worse to be facing other Guardians than real enemies who wanted her dead?

“Helm on!” Idisi chirped.

Diris braced, to no effect. Her smooth-faced helm materialized over her head in a rush of glitter. The interior screens flickered on, giving her as clear a view of her surroundings as she would have with her own eyes, but with the addition of a simple HUD—minor aim-assist, a motion-tracking radar, and indicators tied to sensors that picked up the buildup of Light energy in her body.

“Ready to go?” Idisi whispered. Most of the others had vanished and Diris groaned as she discorporeated.

She re-materialized in a courtyard, edged with rubble and walls blackened with cannon fire. Shaxx’s voice echoed over comms, “Capture and defend, Guardians!”

The more experienced members of Diris’s team set off at once, splitting to cover different angles. The titan who Zed had pointed out as their sniper glided onto a second-story platform that gave them a clear line to the mid point and the opposing team’s lane. A few others cleared corners and then pushed into a larger courtyard near the point. 

Zed’s voice crackled in Diris’s comms. “Hey, rookie.” Diris glanced around to see Zed waving from a doorway. She followed the other warlock inside, where they stood beside a banner in the corner of a wide open room. Sensing their presence, the banner began scanning them, and capture percentage ticked up in a display on the floor and Diris’s HUD.

“I’m going to take the upper landing here,” Zed explained, pointing to a second-floor door toward the central courtyard. “You should try finding a spot off to the right. You’ve got a nice narrow lane next to mid that you can focus on, lots of ways to break line of sight, and if you need to retreat, you just pull back into the side yard, where Arjun can cover you.”

Diris nodded. 

“Watch your radar. Don’t forget what I told you about the hand cannon.” The capture completion pinged. “Let’s go!”

Diris took her advice, ducking first behind a pile of crates as she surveyed the courtyard. One end opened onto the City, the other onto the small square that housed another capture point. Down the middle, a decorative concrete barrier provided cover. Gunfire echoed out of the building opposite, apparently identical to the one she had just left. Her HUD clicked through notifications of completed kills: two opponents and one teammate had died. The meaning behind the names on her HUD staggered her briefly.

Fresh gunfire overhead made Diris jump—Zed fired at an opponent as they slid onto mid point. They dropped quickly, and a new name flashed on Diris’s HUD. Her heart hammered.

A red flash out of the corner of her eye made Diris glance at her radar, but it was gone. The only movement nearby came from Zed, marked with a blue dot. So she thought.

“Careful, rookie,” Zed whispered into comms, “someone just pinged my radar. They’re probably waiting around a corner.”

Diris swallowed, breaths coming in shallow gasps. She slipped back into the building, to relative safety, but as she turned a corner she tumbled almost into the arms of a titan.

Their shotgun blasted open her ribcage.

She revived in a blaze of light, choking and gasping, near the landing zone. Her knees gave out and she clutched at the absent wound, mind still convinced that her chest should be speared with pain and shards of rib.

Diris hefted her rifle and tried again, more cautiously. An opponent had managed to creep onto her team’s point. From where she entered on the upper floor, Diris rained down bullets. It was the Titan with the shotgun. The void was ready in her hand as the titan launched themselves at her. Shields already weak from Diris’s bullets, the grenade finished them off, scattering their body into violet sparks. But not before their shotgun took off her head.

Diris managed to keep her feet this time as she respawned, but could not help checking the structural integrity of her teeth. Her stomach turned.

The friendly titan sniper—Arjun, she remembered—glanced back at Diris from his perch. “You alright, rookie?” he asked over comms.

“I am beginning to dislike shotguns,” she answered quietly.

Her team laughed softly, knowingly in her ears.

“I hear that!” Arjun said, turning back to his scope.

Instead of crossing immediately back onto their point, Diris slid around the back of the building, eyes peeled for movement or a flicker on her radar. The enemy titan kept coming for the point; she could be ready for them. Diris crouched, waiting, ten paces from the flag with her revolver in hand.

Sure enough, they came. Reckless and sure of victory. As they slid onto the point, Diris stood and took aim. Two shots and a punch.

The first hit their helm dead-on and their shields fizzled. She fumbled the second as they charged her, streaks of electricity spilling off of their body. But the void was close to hand; before the Titan could finish their charge, Diris speared them with a fistful of void. Purple bloomed over their armor and their body and its electric charge dissipated harmlessly on a stray breeze.

Diris had to pause to understand what happened. Despite the rush of victory, a thrill of unease ran through her. Her hand had not touched the charging Titan, but the void had bridged the inches-long gap for her.

“Get ready, rookie,” Arjun warned, “I couldn’t get a shot on them—cloaked hunter headed your way.”

Diris took several steadying breaths and traded out her hand cannon for the auto rifle. Red flared on her radar and she spun toward it. A ripple of air passed into the room and she managed to land two rounds before a thrown knife cleaved her skull.

As her feet touched ground again, Diris trembled.

“Are you alright?” Idisi whispered into her helmet.

“Yes.”

Zed’s voice burst in over comms. “They’re rushing home! Fall back to defend.”

Diris waited for another teammate, a hunter, before gliding into the upper floor of the nearby building. Zed already crouched across the room from the second-floor landing, firing on any enemy body parts that appeared through the nearest doorway. The hunter took up a position above the flag and Diris knelt by Zed to support her. Other teammates moved in to back them up. 

Five members of the enemy team poured into the building, through various doors. Though they landed a few shots, Diris and Zed were forced back. The hunter pushed the enemy flank with a grenade launcher. But _that t_ itan reappeared, sprinting and spitting lightning as they swerved around other targets to aim for Diris. She emptied her clip, but too many went wide in her uneasy grip.

The titan crashed into her. Lightning burned through and shattered her molecules.

Reviving was nearly as much of a shock and Diris swayed where she stood.

Zed materialized beside her a moment later. “That titan has it out for you!” she said, stretching.

Indeed they had. Diris's every attempt to defend their home point was met with the titan’s fists and shotgun, from every conceivable angle of approach. When she ventured once into the courtyard, they even expended their ultimate attack on her alone, scattering lightning a dozen feet in every direction.

It took Diris a moment upon reviving to remember how to move air through her lungs. She kept that moment for herself. That titan seemed…angry, vengeful, gleeful in crushing her body over and over again. The thought chilled her and Diris found she was developing a distaste for fighting other Guardians. She did not like to see the relish with which they killed each other.

Diris had come to train. In battle against the enemies of the city, those emotions would not serve her. Through the threads of the void she bore, Diris could feel its calm, siphoning off the heat of frustration.

She understood the shape of the battlefield in her mind. That titan would come again where they had learned to expect her. Their tactics were crude and simple, but Diris lacked the reflexes to counter them. The rest of the battles took place closer to the mid point. Her opponents flooded it as best they could, drawing back occasionally to defend their home point.

“Zed,” Diris said over comms, voice rasping as the vocal chords stretched with new use, “I’m ready. I am going to go for the far point. Without me there, that titan will come for you. Everyone, push our opponents into the central courtyard.” She recalled that manners helped communicate. “Please.”

The other warlock’s laugh buzzed low in the static. “Yes, commander!” Other team members chuckled, too, but none contradicted her. Immediately Arjun slung his rifle over his shoulder and glided off to a better position.

Diris took out her hand cannon once more and slid into the hallway that ran behind the middle point. Arjun had pushed up farther, clearing the open enemy lane simply with the threat of his presence. Two other teammates swept through the building to her right, herding their opponents toward the far point. Zed and the friendly hunter set themselves out as bait, drawing into the courtyard opponents who were too eager for the kill.

Diris’s radar flashed with the movement of an opponent who had hidden—behind cover in the lower floor of the next building over. A well-placed grenade scattered their body to the winds.

Diris made for the central courtyard. Two opponents had taken the bait, and the other two, her radar told her, were retreating from Diris’s other teammates inside. Together, the four opponents dove into the courtyard, much too interested in Zed and her companion to notice Diris.

The void pulsed in her body, lending every movement an extra burst of momentum. What was it, precisely, that she pulled from the void? Whatever it was spilled out of her, blooming in her hands. Hunger, silence, death, pooled and swirled, gathering strength. 

Diris’s teammates saw her coming and scattered. The enemy team pursued eagerly. They only looked around as Diris’s bomb drained away the sunlight. Then they began to flee.

When the orb brushed two opponents, they vaporized instantly. The bomb split further into bolts that screamed toward the two remaining targets. Those Guardians exploded in sparks.

In silence, Diris’s team captured the third point. Diris wondered if she had done something wrong.

The titan did not hunt her down again, though they met in combat. Diris’s teammates stopped calling her “rookie,” or even addressing her directly. They kept simply to standard call outs, on their own or enemy positions, successes and failures. Diris, for her part, tried to maintain a lack of emotional investment in the day’s matches. She had to work hard to fight down her own fear when she saw the panic in the actions of even her teammates whenever she threw another void bomb.

By evening, Diris was exhausted. Her body felt as fresh as it had that morning, revived as often as it was by Idisi. But her mind had been working all day, and it told her that her muscles should be aching, her stomach should be groaning with the absence of food she did not really need. And, she needed time away from other people.

When, at last, it was time to return to the Tower, the teams gathered by their respective landing zones and their Ghosts transmatted the Guardians back onto their transport ship.

The return journey was quiet. Shaxx seemed in high spirits, but the rest looked as exhausted as Diris felt. She sat beside Zed again, who did not speak for a long while, but kept glancing at Diris.

Idisi did a scan of Diris's body. “I can simply refresh you again in the morning, but I believe you should sleep tonight—your mind needs rest.”

Diris did not answer.

“Ikora has already sent a message—we will meet her in her office again tomorrow morning—Can we help you?” Idisi fixed Zed with a sharp stare.

Zed started. After a moment, she spoke gently to Diris. “I cannot pretend to have seen everything, but I have been a warlock for ten years and I have never seen the void as I have seen it today. Please be careful.”

Zed’s words followed Diris back to the dormitories. Idisi convinced her that food, _real_ nourishment, would serve her well. But in the mess hall Diris did not speak at all, allowing Idisi to fill the silence while she meditated on the warning in Zed’s eyes and voice.

Zed knew the void, and even she feared what Diris had shown her of it.

Diris had questions for Ikora—not as much specific inquiries as a host of thoughts butting up against each other. Back in their room, Idisi sighed and stretched in their own way, with a ripple of metal plates. “Well,” they said pointedly, “time to turn in!”

“Pull up the archive again.”

Diris blinked and Idisi stared.

“Please.”

“Your mind needs rest.”

“I need to understand.”

The whirring of Idisi’s plates resembled a growl. “You know this is a partnership. I am not here simply to do your bidding.”

“Are you upset?”

“ _Yes_ , I am upset! You are overworking yourself and disregarding my advice.” The Ghost focused their beam tight on her. “At least tell me what is so important that you need to research it _right now_.”

Diris tried to organize the collection of thoughts intended for Ikora. “Should I be afraid of myself?” she asked.

Idisi cocked to one side. “No, I don’t think so.”

“What is the void, then?”

“I don’t know.”

“I need to know. I need to see it so I understand why…Zed told me to be careful.”

Idisi considered this. “What if what we find makes you feel worse?”

“At least then I can make a decision. I can do something about it.”

Idisi sighed. “Alright. Where do you want to start tonight?”

“What is the best place to learn about the void?”

Idisi buzzed as they scanned archive entries. “Well, Ikora has written no small amount of work on the subject. There is also the writing of Toland the Shattered, although what work we have from him is very…metaphysical.”

Diris nodded. “Show me Toland.”

She hated it. Toland’s writing was pompous; it attempted to be poetic but as a result refused hard answers or usable data. But it did introduce Diris to the Ascendant Realms and the Hive who used them.

The pair quickly abandoned the works of Toland in pursuit of more information on this race that was entirely new to Diris. Their language—written in symbols that were both phonetic and also representative of concepts—and their expansive rituals drew her interest. They served what they called the Deep, named the Darkness by others, and Diris could see in these principles one of the feelings that she had sensed pulling on her.

The Books of Sorrow gave Diris new words to describe the void. The Books posited the Deep--the Darkness and its agents--against the Sky--Light, the Traveler, and its allies--and Diris could feel a familiar truth in them: on the one hand, the hungry impulse to survive at all costs, to consume others, the war of all against all; on the other, the impulse to live good lives together, the way of community and all for all.

But one passage gave Diris pause, enough so that she set the research aside for the night to roll it around in her mind and seek to make sense of it. She tried to square the Traveler’s Light and purpose with the ruthless glee with which Guardians had slain each other that day. And she tried to understand why, then, the other Guardians had cowered away in terror from what they saw in the void that Diris brought down on them.

> _Verse 4:6—Eater of Hope_
> 
> _We fight a war against false hope. We chase a god called the Traveler, a huckster god who baits young life into building houses for it. These houses are unsafe, for they cannot stand against my Hive. And these houses are a trap—for they lead young life away from the blade and the tooth, which are the tools of survival and the means of ascension._
> 
> _Only when the Traveler is extinguished will the universe be free to arrange itself, and assume, by ruthless contest, its final perfect shape, a shape which depends on nothing but itself._


	2. Faith in Bone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ikora assigns Diris to a training course, and the new Guardian works hard to attain approval to enter the field. All the while, she and Idisi continue to read up on the Hive, and Cayde-6 takes a stab at mentoring.  
> Diris earns her first assignment, and makes ready for a mission on Titan.

“Come in, Diris, Idisi.” Ikora stood by her office window, surveying the lands beyond the City. She turned to face them as they joined her. “How have you been settling in?” she asked.

“We have been making great use of our archival access!” Idisi bounced and trilled, eye twinkling as she recounted their intellectual journeys. Ikora’s own Ghost peered around her shoulder, glaring at Idisi’s apparently unbecoming display of enthusiasm. 

“Pay no mind to Ophiuchus. He has very specific ideas about the roles of Ghosts and Guardians.” Ikora and her Ghost exchanged a tense look, and he retreated. Ikora glanced up kindly at Diris. “So you are curious about humanity's enemies?”

Diris nodded.

“You are curious about the Darkness.” 

More slowly, Diris nodded.

“No need to worry—unlike some Guardians, I believe it is wise to understand the motives and methods of those who would destroy us if they could. That is the purpose of my Hidden—they are spies, gathering intelligence on the movements of agents of the Darkness. Perhaps, one day, you might join them. But for now,” Ikora settled at her desk and motioned for Diris to take the seat opposite, “we must discuss your training. Your strong connection to the void notwithstanding, you lack a solid foundation. Your aim and your knowledge of weapons need work. And while your use of the void is deep, it is also unfocused and emotional. You need to be able to summon it on a whim.”

Diris fidgeted but nodded. This evaluation was fair, even if it made her feel like a failure.

“So what kind of mission did you have in mind?” Idisi cut in. “Clearing out an Eliksni den? Investigating a Hive ritual?”

Ikora silenced the Ghost with a look. “What, of the things I just said, convinced you that training would consist of a mission. You will train here in the Tower.”

“But _that_ Guardian—”

“We cannot all be _The_ Guardian, little Light. Zavala, Cayde, and I all earned our skills in combat by dying over and over. I do not want that for you. Even more so, I do not wish to risk losing your Light down a Hive nest or in the Ascendant Realm. Shaxx, Zavala, and I have developed a series of training routines and obstacle courses to help provide Guardians with the basics they need before going out into the system. When you have completed the courses to my satisfaction, then we may discuss your first mission.”

Diris saluted, and Idisi’s plates clicked to order and attention.

Ikora chuckled softly. She stood once more and folded her hands behind her back. “Come, let me show you our new training grounds.”

Diris mimicked Ikora’s posture and followed close behind, Idisi drifting along after them.

An elevator took them down a few floors, and bridges brought them below the main sections of the Tower. Ikora paused to key an entry code into a plain metal door.

It slid open onto a massive space like a warehouse. They must be below the hangar. Makeshift walls separated off three stories’ worth of obstacle courses, a firing range, what looked like a mock mission chamber, and a strange, square arena opposite the door. Ikora led the way directly toward it.

“Commander, what is this?” Idisi asked as the warlock led them through a gate in the half-wall enclosure. Ikora did not answer, but tapped a command into a console. Projectors at the corners of the ceiling and floor flared into life, and with them, a figure appeared at the center of the arena. 

It was a robot of some kind. Its metal limbs could be of burnished brass. Its legs were jointed like an animal’s hindquarters, with three wide-spread toes around the foot. In one hand, it held a rifle that sparked with red energy, the same color as a lone, glowing eye set just below a pair of wide horns. Its belly was narrow, and a glass window encased innards of rippling white fluid.

“What is that?” Diris asked.

“This is a Vex Hobgoblin,” Ikora replied. “The Vex are a race of sentient machines. I’ll send along a summary dossier that you can read later. This particular variety is a sniper. See the rifle it is carrying? They fire charged bolts. When trying to kill one, either do so in one shot—aim for the belly—or destroy the head. If you do not, they generate an invulnerability field and engage self-repair routines. Like this.”

Ikora picked up a sidearm resting on a gun rack nearby and fired two rounds into the robot’s shoulder. The metal splintered, making the arm apparently useless. Immediately the robot shrouded itself in orange and yellow light, crouching and folding in on itself. When the light died and it stood upright again, it was as if the arm had never been hit.

“This arena was designed to give you a sense of how the enemies of the Light operate in combat, and test techniques for encountering each of them. As we learn of new enemy types, we will update our programs accordingly.”

“Commander,” Idisi said, slowly, “I understand the wisdom of such a program. But in the case of the Vex, is there not a risk that even a false one…”

“Your concern is understandable, Idisi, but we have not replicated Vex AI, only their movements. It does not think, it merely follows a set of algorithms that defines their typical actions. It is a glorified combat dummy.”

Idisi sighed. Diris had to smile at the affectation. “That is a relief," the Ghost said.

“Why?” Diris asked.

“That will all be in the dossier I send to you later,” Ikora cut in. “For now, I want to start you off. I have other places to be today and I want to make sure to at least cover the topic where I can be most useful.” Ikora indicated the hobgoblin with her head. “I want you to use the Light to destroy it.” She replaced the sidearm on the rack and folded her hands behind her once more. “We broadly categorize Light abilities into three archetypes. Grenades, as you might expect, generate an area of damage, whether that is instantaneous or over time. The ‘melee’ ability is usually broadly defined as the focusing of Light in the hand. And finally the super ability, which is more substantial, boundless, and in some ways more accessible to innovation.”

Diris nodded dutifully, trying to file her own experiences with the Light into their respective categories.

“For now, simply destroy this Vex projection with a grenade.”

“Yes, commander.” Diris closed her eyes to focus. Once again, she sought the well within herself, and the tiny floodgates that opened onto the void. She sighed the power out into her palm until it felt full enough, and then hurled it at the hobgoblin’s feet. The creature disintegrated in a swirl of purple sparks. In a moment, the projectors flickered back to life again, and the projection returned.

“Good,” Ikora said. “A strong blast. However, if you closed your eyes like that in a firefight, Idisi would be scraping bits of your skull off the floor.”

The Ghost started in the air, plates whirring. “Goodness! What an evocative image…”

“The point remains,” Ikora went on, “that you must become faster and more familiar with that connection so that it does not require so much concentration to draw upon your Light. In particular, there is one strategy I would like you to consider: You do not need to strive for full power every time. Your Light can soften and interrupt the target, leaving them vulnerable to your bullets, or those of your fireteam. Each ability does not need to completely destroy its target. Try again, with a melee attack this time, and at lower power. You only need a flash of it.”

Diris bit her lip. She had to work to keep her eyes open as she reached again for the connection within. It was harder, and only came to her in a slow thread. While it still felt like little more than a flickering spark in her palm, Diris lashed out.

To her surprise, the hobgoblin evaporated just as it had before. 

“Excellent.”Ikora nodded her approval. “You see? That was a fraction of the power you would have used, and it was just as effective.” She offered a small smile. “I must leave you now, I’m afraid, but I would like you to continue your training with another hour of this practice—simply alternating your grenade and melee abilities. The best thing for you at this stage is practice. Speed, accuracy—these things will come with time.” 

“May I experiment with other enemies?” Diris asked.

“Of course. Idisi should be able to change them for you. And when you have finished with this training block, move on to one of the other areas. Every console has instructions, and Idisi and the instructor AI will be able to assist you with the basics of technique. I’ll be back in a few hours to check your progress.”

Diris saluted. “Thank you, Commander.”

Ikora laughed, a pleasant and brassy sound Diris hadn’t expected. “Please, just Ikora. And you may stop saluting.” She strode off, leaving Diris and Idisi to their own devices.

Idisi flew immediately to the console. “Let’s get to work! What do we have here…”

The pair settled in. At first, they operated on Idisi’s whims, testing Diris’s Light on any enemies the Ghost found interesting. But after Diris barely made a dent in some of them—the simulated chitin breastplate of a grinning hive knight felt viciously sharp and real as she slammed a hand into it, and the outer solar shield of a massive cabal centurion didn’t even flicker under the swirl of her grenade—they limited the difficulty to smaller and more manageable enemies.

As Ikora had said it would, using the Light did become easier, however briefly. The well in Diris’s body became easier to access, and her use faster, but the work and focus it took was draining. After an hour, Diris felt totally spent.

But her assignment was not over, and after the invigoration of a burst of Light from Idisi, they moved on to test several of the other options. By the time Ikora returned, Diris was drenched with sweat from computer-guided training: a standard agility obstacle course, a combat scenario course, hand-to-hand combat training, and further Light drills had each received a full hour of their attention. Diris realized lunch must have passed them by a long time ago. Idisi continued to repair her body and fill it with energy, but like the day before, Diris's mind knew she should be exhausted.

Ikora waved Diris over. “How is it coming along?”

Diris replaced a pulse rifle on one of the racks at the firing range and stumbled over to the warlock.

“We’ve been busy!” Idisi chirped, outlining the details of the training regimen.

“Good.” Ikora nodded with satisfaction. “And your Light, Diris? How does it feel.”

Diris stretched out tight muscles as she considered her answer. "It is more familiar, at least. But still strange.”

“How so?” Ikora’s voice was even and calm. Diris liked it—no expectations of an answer, simply waiting to hear Diris’s perspective.

Still, Diris struggled to find words. “It feels…disrespectful, I suppose, not to take time for it. The Light, I mean.”

Ikora mulled this over. “I believe I see what you mean. You worry that you are not showing the Traveler’s gift the reverence it is due?”

Diris nodded, and Ikora smiled.

“Do not forget, Diris, the Traveler gave us Light to defend ourselves and the City. You _honor_ the Traveler’s intention by using your Light for that purpose, however swiftly you do so.”

Diris smiled. That made sense. But she and Idisi jumped at a voice ringing across the training grounds.

“ _Ikora!_ ”

More calmly, the warlock herself turned to face their visitor. Cayde jogged up, waving and grinning—at least, that was how Diris translated the Exo’s open-mouthed expression. 

“Big Blue told me I’d find you here. Hey there, rookie!” He took in the many training units. “So, how do you like it? Does it work?”

Diris saluted, and Idisi followed suit as usual. “We have gathered considerable data,” the Ghost said, “which we might not have had otherwise, until it surprised us in the field.” Diris nodded along. 

“So that’s a yes, then?” He shrugged. “No substitute for real experience, though.”

“This method seems to be working to the Guardian’s satisfaction, Cayde. She does not need you pressuring her into the field before she feels ready. What did you wish to discuss with me?”

“Oh! Zavala had something for you about Mercury. I’m starving, though,” he rubbed his hands together, “how about we discuss over ramen?”

Ikora sighed, impatient. “You do not experience hunger, Cayde.”

“But the Guardian does!”

Diris blinked at the pair.

“Please can we go get ramen? _Please?_ ”

“We will discuss the question of Mercury in my office _later_ , Cayde. But you make a good point.” Ikora tilted her head toward Diris. “You have worked hard today, and while you do not _need_ to eat, it does your body good as much as it does any mortal human’s. You should take Cayde up on his offer.”

“What about you?” The Exo frowned. “Ikora, don’t tell me you have work to do!”

Ikora raised her eyebrows and turned toward the door. “I will see you again in the morning. Goodnight, Diris, Idisi.”

“Goodnight, Ikora!” Idisi called, and Diris dipped her head as the warlock left once more. 

“So!” Cayde spread his arms wide in excitement. “Ramen?”

* * *

“Ramen!” Cayde cheered as the chef delivered his bowl. Diris sat beside him at an out-of-the-way Tower shop, frequented mostly by humans. Idisi and the hunter’s Ghost, Sundance, floated and chatted merrily nearby.

Diris looked down at her own bowl as Cayde slurped loudly. 

“Go ahead! Try it!” he managed around a mouthful of noodles.

Diris sipped a spoonful of salty, umami goodness before diving in.

“See? It’s delicious!” Cayde gestured with his spoon to the shop’s owner behind the counter. “My compliments to the chef!” The Exo took a bite of pork and clapped his hands. “So, rookie. Mentor time!” He scratched the back of his neck, as though the metal plates there itched.

Diris did not respond, simply watching him as she took a bite of sliced bamboo shoots.

“So tell me—what’s your combat style? Your mission preference?”

Diris considered her only real combat experience—defending a human settlement against an Eliksni invasion. But she didn’t have the slightest idea how any of that experience my help her answer the hunter’s questions. She settled on a shrug.

“Good!” Despite making the effort in the first place, Cayde looked distinctly uncomfortable with the act of ‘mentoring.’ “Great, yes. That’s the spirit. That’s what I wanted to say, mostly, kid—Ikora is going to teach you a lot of…doing things ‘proper.’ Making regimens, that kind of thing. But nothing on an op _ever_ goes completely according to plan, right? You’ve gotta keep it loosey-goosey. No harm in having _ideas_ , but don’t panic if they don’t plan out." He heaved a sigh and rolled his shoulders, like he’d just gotten something heavy off his chest. “How’s the ramen, still good?”

Diris nodded, enjoying a soy-marinated soft-boiled egg. 

“I know technically we don’t _need_ food,” Cayde said with a wink, “but ‘need’ is a funny word, Guardian. Enjoy what you’ve got. We’re not just saving the world for _them_ , you know!” Cayde swept an arm wide to take in the City, and waved and smiled to the humans sitting to his right.

Diris allowed herself a smile and nodded.

Cayde slurped down more of his ramen and then pointed his chopsticks at her. “Oh, and by the way: You don’t have to talk to me. But I hope you find folks you’re comfortable with.”

Diris considered what Cayde would have looked like with all the fine-tuned expressions that flesh allowed. Perhaps his expression would have been goofy, off-kilter, a kind smile and a discomfort with the somewhat serious, even intimate, conversation. But Diris was grateful, and smiled.

Then, suddenly, as if he’d never brought it up, Cayde leapt into a tale of some escapade or other. Diris took his advice and simply enjoyed the ramen, and the story.

“There I was, checking in on the Shore as usual, when who do you suppose I saw but…”

* * *

Diris and Idisi settled into a routine. First thing in the morning, they walked to the training grounds and practiced until lunch—which Idisi had to enforce at times. In the afternoon, they either returned to the training grounds or joined a shipload of Guardians for an afternoon in the Crucible until they stopped for dinner. Before bed, the pair poured over dossiers and delved back into Tower records.

Again and again, Diris brought them back to the Hive. With the other enemies of the Light, Diris examined tactics, abilities, strengths and weaknesses in combat. But with the Hive, Diris found herself going deeper. She needed to understand their language, cosmology, rituals, _philosophy_. They and their words haunted her, and under her eyes and with the experience of mounting weeks, the geometry of their rituals started to take on distinctive shapes, and the void with it.

And again and again, Diris came back to the Books of Sorrow, with a fearful question: Were the Guardians and the Hive as different as they, as she, hoped?

She needed to see the Hive for herself. She needed to see the Darkness--what they called the Deep--up close, and be certain that, however gleefully Guardians killed, the Light, or the Sky, would and must be different. However many times the Guardians threw themselves upon the enemies of the Light and sharpened their blades, sharpened themselves, upon those enemies, the Sky stood apart.

> Verse 2:6—The Sword Logic
> 
> Your will defeats law. Kill a hundred of your children with a long blade and observe the change in the blade. Observe how the universe shrinks from you in terror.  
> Your existence begins to define itself.
> 
> It was not curiosity alone that brought you back to the war. You felt your own death growing inside you.  
> You must obey your nature.

* * *

Diris’s muscles ached, but she nodded to Idisi. “Again.”

With an almost musical tone, the console activated and reset. A Hive squadron re-materialized in the arena: a swarm of lithe but fragile thrall, a handful of sharpshooter acolytes, and an enormous knight with a sword and shield of thick chitin.

The thrall and the knight charged. Diris rushed into the melee, dropping to her knees to skid under the sweep of the knight’s sword. She launched herself at the nearest thrall and slammed a scrap of void into its skull. The creature bloomed into purple sparks that snapped and crackled over its fellows. Four thrall down in all.

Diris slipped through the new opening. She unloaded three hand cannon rounds into the heads of acolytes. Two others stood close enough for Diris to drop a void field at their feet. She charged through it to allow the grenade and the sparks of the dying acolytes destroy the thrall on her tail.

Cursed thrall, heads pulsating with barely-contained energy, spawned at the edges of the arena.

One bullet was enough to detonate the closest one. Diris shielded her eyes as the blast took out two neighboring cursed thralls and the remainder of the original thrall rush. As the knight charged her again, Diris traded the hand cannon for a heavy grenade launcher. She launched skyward, dropping rounds in her wake. The grenades slowed the knights approach and damaged it further with the explosions of dying cursed thrall. The knight’s chitin shield shattered and the creature summoned an ethereal shield of energy to heal itself.

Diris swapped back to her hand cannon to pick off the remaining cursed thrall. With her feet back on the ground and a shotgun in her hand, she closed the distance to the knight. It dropped its shield to roar in her face.

Diris cracked open its chitin faceplate with two rounds from the shotgun and disintegrated it with a fistful of void.

She jumped at the sound of modest applause behind her. Ikora smiled as she approached. “You’ve come a long way.”

“Thank you,” Diris panted.

“It’s been a long six weeks!” Idisi trilled, bouncing with pride toward the edge of the arena. Ghost and Guardian alike eyed a datapad in Ikora’s hand.

“How are you feeling about your progress?” the warlock asked.

“Idisi, please share our training records with the commander.” Diris saluted to Ikora. “As you will see based on these reports, I have mastered each weapon to at least the base satisfaction of the training AI, with the exception of a few weapons with which I excel. I have done every training course, routine, and mock combat situation so many times I can virtually predict enemy movements.” She took a deep breath, still winded from the battle and now nervous about her request. “If you please, Commander Ikora, I would like to go out into the field.”

Ikora gave another of her soft smiles. “I can certainly certify you for the field, and just in time, as it happens. I have a mission here that I think might interest you.”

Diris replaced the training weapons on their respective racks and jogged to the arena gate. “What is it?”

“This op is not combat-heavy, but I think it will allow you to begin studying the Darkness you are so curious about.”

Idisi’s plates rattled and vibrated with excitement, and Diris could hardly blame them—she had to work to keep from drumming her fingers on the half wall of the arena.

Ikora tapped a few instructions into her pad. Idisi cheeped and sidled over to Diris to share the document with their Guardian.

“You’ll be headed to Titan to assist with cleanup after a series of forays into hive territory. A squad of nine Guardians was murdered there; the Hive stole their light and transformed it into crystals for ritual purposes. A fireteam has already gone through and cleared the area of enemies, but we need to tag and collect samples. I want to know what the ritual was intended to do, how it worked, and whether there were an anomalies or new enemies we need to be aware of.

“Among them…our Guardians in the field reported the largest hive Shrieker they’ve ever seen. I want to know _everything_ about it.” Ikora’s eyes twinkled. “What do you think Diris? Idisi? Are you up to it?”

Diris couldn’t hold back a grin. “Absolutely.”


	3. Aiat, Aiat, Aiat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Diris's first assignment takes her and her fireteam down into Titan's Arcology, following in the footsteps of another fireteam that shut down a Hive ritual, with the mission to secure whatever artifacts they can find. But if the ritual did not fail, after all, Diris and her fireteam are walking into a trap...

Books of Sorrow, Verse 1:4—Syzygy

> Imagine the fifty-two moons of Fundament lining up in the sky…Imagine their gravity pulling on the Fundament sea, lifting it into a swollen bulge...  
> Imagine that bulge collapsing as the syzygy passed. A wave big enough to swallow civilizations. A God-Wave.

Space was…terrible, and beautiful. Diris tried not to think about the endless, merciless vacuum just on the other side of metal and ceramic plating. But before her, Saturn turned gently in the darkness, and the atmosphere of Titan on its sunward side glowed green beneath Diris’s ship. 

A blonde, excitable engineer in the Tower hangar had presented Diris with a standard, unadorned jump ship. It didn’t look like much but it zipped smoothly in to carve through the moon’s shield of clouds. 

“Here are our docking coordinates.” Idisi flicked a point of light up on Diris’s monitor. The ship’s onboard computer calculated descent angle, wind-speed, and charted a landing trajectory. Diris allowed it to take control of their arrival.

As they broke through cloud cover, Diris gaped at the vast methane ocean. The waves were each at least a dozen feet high, and they crashed against the remains of New Pacific Arcology, formerly a Golden Age research station and self-sustaining city. Now only a single, massive dome remained, surrounded by what pump towers had survived and a smattering of docks that bobbed on the roiling sea.

As the jump ship slowed, Diris could make out the infestation that had consumed a portion of the Arcology on the far side of the dome. Barnacles completely obscured one of the tidal anchors, and sickly yellow sacks ballooned from the roof.

Diris swallowed nerves. As she and her Ghost had gone over the mission dossier, Idisi had pulled up a summary of the Collapse on Titan. A massive wave, large enough to sweep over the Arcology and tear apart domes like it, had destroyed most of the human settlements on Saturn’s moon. The proto-hive, as described in the Books of Sorrow, had called such a thing a God-Wave: the product of fifty-two moons aligning, the combined gravitational pull creating a wall of ocean so high it could shatter continents. Titan’s was the product of an earthquake, and then an icefall. Still, Diris wondered whether Titan was familiar to the Hive, somehow. Did they feel welcome here? Did the moon remind them of what they had known for millennia, the significance of celestial alignment? 

In the pilot seat of her jump ship, Diris fidgeted as she let the onboard computer bring the ship in to land in a free spot on one of the floating docks. It rocked uncomfortably under Diris’s feet and they swayed toward the nearest anchored tower. From the landing, Idisi pointed out the former research station where the Vanguard had set up a base camp, and the pair set off along the web of metal walkways. The methane waves lapped at times nearly up to Diris’s feet.

The pair were thoroughly wind-whipped and chilled—even through the airtight suit—by the time they reached the site atop the research platform.

A broad-shouldered woman with short hair and a number of colorful medals pinned to her armor welcomed them into her overlook. “Welcome to Titan. I’m Commander Sloane.”

Diris and Idisi saluted, and the woman smiled.

“At ease. You’re here for the survey mission?”

“Guardian Diris and Ghost Idisi reporting for duty,” the Ghost said.

“You’re the second to arrive. We’re just waiting for your third.” She gestured to a nearby room. “Have a seat, we can talk through the op when everyone is here. You’re safe to remove the helmet. The air out here is only minimally poisonous,” she chuckled. “The air inside is filtered.”

Diris took the invitation to step inside. The door hissed open and sealed shut behind Guardian and Ghost. Diris cracked open her helmet to breathe the stale, filtered air. A Titan sat at a long table nearby, consulting with their Ghost. They had not taken their helm off, but Diris recognized the armor: Arjun, the sniper from the first Crucible match. It felt so long ago, already.

He recognized Diris, as well, and even through the helmet his voice was loud and warm. “Well, look who it is! What was your name again?”

Diris and Idisi exchanged a quick look. Diris swallowed and answered for herself. “Diris—warlock, void attunement. Reporting for Operation Ariel.”

“You, too! Wow. Finally approved for the field, then?”

Diris nodded.

“We’ll have to watch each others’ backs, then.” He hefted his trusty sniper rifle.

Diris gave a small smile. “You were very good at that, as I recall. I will make sure to return the favor.”

Arjun chuckled. “Lemme see your loadout.”

Idisi transmatted the hand cannon and shotgun into Diris’s grip. The Guardian hefted them, stowed them again.

“Is that a Duke?” He pointed to the hand cannon.

Diris nodded.

“Solid choice. The shotgun?”

A shrug. “Badlands.”

He mimicked the gesture. “What kind of heavy artillery have you got?”

“Whatever the Commander can offer.”

"Ah, I know the feeling well. You’ll get there, but,” Diris could hear the smile in Arjun’s voice, “you hold them with a lot more ease than you did a few weeks ago. You’ll do fine.”

The door behind Diris slid open again with a burst of the complex musky and fishy scent of Titan’s atmosphere. Diris was glad of the recycled oxygen smell when the door shut once more behind Sloane and their third—a hunter.

“Excellent.” Sloane rested her hands on well-armored hips. “You’re all here and we can begin. I’m afraid introductions must be brief. Arjun, he/him, sniper specialist?”

The titan nodded and raised a hand.

“Alab, he/him, stealth expert?” The hunter signaled Sloane and collapsed into a chair. 

“And Diris, she/her, Hive ritual specialist.” 

Diris started at the title, but nodded.

“Have you all read the dossier?”

The trio assented.

“Good, then we can be quick. We initially sent in a squad of nine Guardians to investigate a Hive ritual deep in the Arcology. Guardian Verin led a strike search and rescue squad after we lost contact. His team confirmed that all nine Guardians were dead—the Hive had ripped out their Light, distilled it into crystals, and were using it to power a ritual. Verin and the others broke through Hive defenses, interrupted the ritual, and cleared out the nest. Unfortunately, all Light crystals were destroyed in the process.

“Currently, we suspect the ritual was a summoning. Your directive is primarily to obtain all possible samples. Secondary objectives are determining ritual type and _what_ , if anything, was being summoned. Tertiary objective, identify and classify any new enemy types. We don’t anticipate a firefight, but I trust you all can handle yourselves if there is one.”

Sloane folded her hands behind her back. “Any questions?”

“Yeah.” The hunter, Alab, was eyeing Diris. “How old is this one? She looks green.”

Sloane’s smile was piercing. “She’s New Light and has been cleared by Ikora Rey. Apparently she’s a first-rate shot.”

“ _New Light_?” Alab snorted, a burst of stating through his helm. “How much of a ‘ritual specialist’ can she be?”

Arjun thumped a solid fist down on the table. 

Sloane watched Alab, who held up his hands and decided not to say anything else. “Diris has been assigned to this mission by Ikora Rey. Any concerns maybe taken up with her. In the meantime, let’s check gear and get you all loaded onto the dropship. Since the area is clear, we should be able to get you pretty close.”

* * *

Commander Sloane stayed behind in the command center, but the new, slightly tense fireteam loaded onto a dropship. As it rattled and jostled through Titan’s winds, the three sat in silence. Arjun was a comforting presence on the seat beside Diris, checking and cleaning his guns. Diris and Idisi communicated with barely a look—they were getting better at that—and Idisi opened the report of the previous fireteam for Diris to reread for the fourth or fifth time.

Guardian designated Taeko-3 witnessed ritual elements. Fireteam reported her words: I’m looking at a hell of a summoning ritual. Biggest shrieker I’ve seen in all my lives. Mark my words, something real mean and real old is gonna use that thing to lay eyes on this planet.

Diris ran over everything she had learned about summoning rituals. Wizards and their deathsongs were common. If a shrieker was the centerpiece of the ritual, though…what kind of summoning was this? Shriekers weren’t living, they were simply vessels of Hive energy. 

Diris sighed, filling her helmet with warm air. She and Idisi had already, in their excitement, run over the scenario a dozen times, but there was nothing new they could glean until they saw the scene for themselves. And at the same time, it was becoming more real, much more than reports, charts, and transcripts. Diris tapped out her nervous energy onto her knee.

The warlock waved off Idisi’s projection. The Ghost obeyed, and they both leaned forward to watch the monitor that showed their approach. A massive hole in the domed Arcology roof granted access to the structure. Below, the enclosed city was comprised of once-elegant and curving terraces, interlocking and folding in on themselves in places to produce courtyards and plazas, now overgrown with plants. In many places, the terraces showed the wear-and-tear of battles, and a large section was overgrown with the same barnacles Diris had seen covering one of the tidal anchors outside.

Arjun rose to watch with them. Comms clicked on in Diris’s ear. “Wer’re coming up on the LZ,” Arjun said. “We can’t get access to the underbelly via dropship, so we’ll have a little walk. Looks clear of hostiles for now, but we should take it slow. Alab, can you take point—”

“Who died and made you captain?” the hunter snapped. 

Arjun whirled on him, a glare hot even through the featureless dome of his helm. His voice was calm, though. “Did you have another idea? How would you like to approach it?”

Alab coughed and busied himself with his gear again. “I’d like to take point.”

“Great, I’ll take rear. Does that sound good, Diris?”

She found she had no preference, but nodded.

The pilot interrupted. “We’re here!” they called back to the trio, “Ready up, folks!”

Arjun thumped Diris on the shoulder. “It’s go time.”

The fireteam materialized in one of the many courtyards. Much of it was overgrown with ivy and flowers. The planters bore evidence of a recent firefight, partly shattered or stained with ash and pockmarked. Hive bodies—or what remained of them—lay around the courtyard. The Guardians froze upon landing.

Diris crouched low next to a planter to listen. There was nothing—not over comms, nothing from the corridors surrounding them, no blips on the radar.

Alab ahead motioned for the other two to remain and slipped toward the lower courtyard entrance. 

Arjun and Diris took more of a look around the courtyard. The bodies had fallen, roughly, in an array around a central pedestal of chitin. It was hollow, with four main prongs clearly designed to hold something—likely the void orbs the previous fireteam’s report had spoken of. Diris knelt beside the pedestal and waved Idisi over. The Ghost flicked on their scanner. In their light, Diris could make out streams of Hive runes weaving down every side of the hollow pedestal. Diris frowned. Hive glyphs did not _weave_. In Oryx’s halls, they were rigid and disciplined, in even lines. 

Idisi’s scanner flicked off. “Scan complete. Should I send it off to Sloane?” 

“Yes, thank you.”

Idisi opened the main channel. “Commander Sloane, we’ve got our first sample coming your way.”

As Idisi started the transmat, Alab’s voice came over comms. “Hallway’s clear. Not much in the way of a Hive presence here, except for a few bodies.”

“Be there in a moment,” Diris answered. In a moment, the transmat completed. Diris rose to follow Alab down the hall, Arjun in tow.

The group proceeded carefully through what were still, in some places, sleek and beautiful corridors. Alab drew his bow at each corner, ready to drop a target on sight, but at every corner he eased the arrow back once more. Diris felt like the bow string, except that the tension did not relax with each empty room. The Arcology was so _quiet_.

They passed a freshwater fountain, miraculously still running, and at the bottom of a ramp Diris and Arjun paused to wait for Alab’s signal that the coast was clear. Comms clicked on. “Sloane,” the hunter said, waving the others into the room after him, “we’re clear so far, but we’ve reached one of the Hive chambers.”

“What do you see?” the commander asked. 

“I think we’ve found one of the crystal rooms.”

Diris gaped as they crossed the threshold. The sims back in the Tower had not prepared her for this. The Hive barnacles were becoming familiar but the whole room was so…wet. Great yellow sacks hung heavy in the corners and ropes of some organic material dripped from the walls. Diris was glad she had a helmet on. The atmospheric readings on her HUD warned her that the air _reeked_ , like sulfur and rot. She drew her hand cannon as she crossed to where Alab had stopped, inspecting part of the wall.

He was standing in front of one of many pockets in the calcified Hive growth. Diris leaned close to examine it herself, and Idisi’s flashlight beam caught a faint sparkle of dust in the crevices.

“Idisi, can you get any readings on that material?”

“Of course.” The Ghost focused and beeped, analyzing. “It is a strange compound, but it seems akin to quartz—primarily carbon crystals. It seems very likely to be a remnant of one of the Light crystals mentioned in the report, however,” their flashlight beam flicked toward Diris, “There is no Light here. It has been released, fully.” They sighed.

“Are you alright?”

“I’m sad,” Idisi admitted, “but also glad that they were freed.”

Diris felt a compulsion to lay a hand on the Ghost’s shoulder but couldn’t think up a way to do so on Idisi’s tiny frame. She simply nodded. “Let me know if it gets to be too much.”

“Thank you.” Idisi switched their beams. “I’ll send as much of a sample as I can back to Sloane.”

Diris rose, checking for Arjun and Alab. The hunter had already cleared the next room and was updating Sloane. But Arjun was stock-still, staring out the door they had come through. His Ghost floated close by.

He looked around as Diris approached. She gestured out the door with a tilt of her head. Arjun shook his head. “Bhuta—my Ghost thought she detected something.”

“What do you mean?”

He and his Ghost had a brief private conversation.

“She explains it as a gravity…blip.”

“What’s happening?” Idisi asked, drifting up to join Diris.

“Arjun says their Ghost detected a gravity ‘blip.’”

“What?” The Ghosts faced each other, beaming information back and forth. 

Alab appeared so quietly at Diris’s elbow that she and the titan both jumped. “What’s the hold up?”

Arjun clutched his chest and shifted his grip on the sniper rifle. “My Ghost registered a brief anomaly. It’s gone now, apparently.”

The six of them—Guardians and Ghosts—paused for a moment, listening. As if gravity had a sound, Diris thought to herself. She swallowed nerves, throat tight. The hackles on her neck prickled.

“I think we should keep moving,” Alab said, voice barely audible over comms.

Arjun nodded. “We can note the anomaly in our report. Let’s keep moving.”

They did, with quiet haste. The next room was worse, even, than the one before it. Diris tried not to react as something squished under her foot.

A hole in the floor, about six feet in diameter, led to deep darkness, and the way forward. Chains draped across it suspended a spiked object between them. 

“I’m going to check out the pit. Wait for my signal.” Alab and his Ghost paused a moment to evaluate the drop, and then disappeared from view. After a moment, a wet thump signaled his landing.

Diris and Idisi leaned forward to inspect the ritual objects. Around the gap at irregular intervals were five chitin pillars, between which the shackled object was suspended—or, in truth, the bundle of objects. The central cluster of shaped pillars were perhaps five feet in height, with one of those feet protruding below the metal band that bound them together. On them were the neat lines of Hive glyphs Diris had expected, in trios near one edge of each chitin pillar at what Diris assumed must be precise, specific locations. 

“Make sure we have a complete scan of this before sending it off to Sloane. I want to make sure we can work on comparisons ourselves.”

“Yes, boss!” Idisi chirped.

Arjun crouched down beside Diris to watch as she tapped notes into a small datapad. “I’ll admit, I’ve not really been one to listen much to comms when they tell us to dismantle Hive rituals. ‘Dismantle’ means ‘destroy’ as far as I’m concerned, so I don’t have any idea what any of this is.”

“This is a ritual capstone. It has been placed at a strategic location to channel the energy of the crystals for the ritual. Deathsingers are usually the ones who facilitate this process.” Diris glanced at the titan; he still watched her in silence, and she wondered how much he knew. She decided to elaborate. “Deathsingers are a specialized type of wizard, and they essentially sing death into existence.”

“I thought this was a summoning ritual, though. Why use Deathsingers?”

Diris found herself surprised at her own confidence. “Hive magic operates through death rituals and sacrifice and splits the fabric of reality.” She pointed to a specific glyph: a curved line arcing over a horizontal bar with four other lines radiating beneath it. “This one, you see, means ‘doorway,’ or ‘chamber,’ and might indicate they were tapping into a Throne World.” She frowned. “But I’m puzzled by the linguistics, in general. The pedestal we found in the courtyard approaches ritual script in a way I have never seen before.” Diris dismissed the thought that she had never seen _any_ ritual script in person before today.

Arjun interrupted her thoughts. “You talk a lot more than I had expected.”

Diris paused. “Oh, I’m sorry, I suppose I started droning on—”

“No, no! I don’t mean that it’s uninteresting. You’ve probably just spoken as much in one minute as I’ve heard you say, cumulatively, up to this moment. You seem to like this.” He waved a hand at the capstone.

Diris took a long breath to give herself time to answer. “I enjoy the puzzle, I suppose. And I feel like if I understand it, maybe I could…I don’t know, understand myself?” Too personal. Diris forced a laugh. It felt choked and awkward and she stopped. She returned to her notes.

“I don’t think I get it, but thank you for explaining.” Suddenly, Arjun’s head jerked upright as his Ghost chirped at him.

Idisi spun away from their scan. “Even I felt it that time.”

“Did that ‘blip’ happen again?” Diris asked.

Arjun nodded. “Bhuta says it feels like a small, temporary black hole.”

Diris’s chest tightened. She had only learned to shoot Hive. Black holes were not in her wheelhouse. “Idisi, how’s the scan coming along?”

“Done. I’ll transmat the spell cap immediately.”

Arjun nodded. “Let’s move on, whether Alab is ready for us or not.” He patched into the full comms channel. “Sloane, tell the pilot to be ready for a swift departure. We’re not sure what we’ve got in here, but I’m not sure it’s something we can shoot. We’re descending toward the ritual chamber.”

“Okay,” Sloane said uneasily. “Be careful, Guardians.”

“Alab,” Arjun said, “We’re coming down, ready or not.”

“Let’s get the job done,” came the reply.

Arjun and Diris exchanged looks. 

“Ready for this?” the titan asked. 

“You mean ready to drop into more disgusting Hive goo? No.”

Arjun laughed. The sound was pleasant and warm, even through their helms, and it bolstered Diris’s spirits. “Alright, off you get. Be careful.”

“You, too. Follow close behind.”

The hole did not afford a clear drop. Idisi flicked on their flashlight as Diris dropped onto a sling of slippery membrane, and then slid down onto some kind of chitinous growth. 

“Were you able to get a scan of the blip?” Diris asked her Ghost.

“No, but I’ll be ready for the next one. I’ll see if I can show you what it looks like. If there is a next time, anyway.” Of course, they couldn’t count on it showing up again. Diris really hoped it wouldn’t.

Alab waited at the bottom, Ghost illuminating the pit floor. The human architecture here had been completely consumed. “Watch your step,” the hunter said.

With some thumping and cursing, Arjun soon dropped down beside them. “Ready?”

“I haven’t quite finished checking the area,” Alab cautioned, leading them on anyway. “Visibility in here is terrible.”

“I noticed.” 

The group shuffled through the darkness as quickly as they could given the slippery and uneven ground. Diris suspected the other two felt as uneasy as she did, like there were eyes watching them in silence. But still nothing showed on the radar, and nothing materialized out of the pitch dark before them.

The ritual chamber was mercifully illuminated with light from far above. It was a large room, so cluttered with Hive growths in some areas that they gave the human architecture new contours. A hill of it rose into one corner, and the Hive had consecrated an existing raised platform as their central dais. There was no far wall, as the room opened onto the edge of the Arcology’s underbelly and the floor fell away into a deep pit. Though the organization was different than other Hive rituals that had been recorded in the archives, Diris could identify the basics: the central dais held a pedestal, where the wizard must have called down…whatever it was; and suspended over the Arcology’s depths was a cluster of platforms that must have operated like a stage for the shrieker and its accompanying Deathsingers as they called forth a tear in space and time.

Alab and Arjun already strode across the barnacle and crumbling chitin floor, checking for any smaller artifacts of interest. Alab cursed colorfully. “The previous fireteam couldn’t have taken the damn shrieker with them? It’s _right here_.”

“I’m sure Verin and the others had other things to worry about,” Arjun said from the suspended platform across the pit. He waved to Diris. “I’ve got another one of those hollowed-out pedestals here.”

“Great, thank you. Get a scan and send it off to Sloane.”

He nodded. The comms clicked in Diris’s ear. “Sloane, we’re in the ritual chamber,” Arjun said. “We’re sending the shrieker corpse and some more ritual items your way.”

“Copy that, Fireteam Ariel.”

Diris and Idisi made their slippery way up to the central dais and the low pedestal that was its centerpiece. Diris released a long breath as she traced more new streams of glyphs with her eyes. “I don’t think we should be interpreting these rituals based on the Hive we’re familiar with,” she murmured to Idisi. 

“Why not?”

“We’re familiar with Oryx and his offspring, but I think this might be a different…sect.” Diris gestured around. “Given the proximity to the Dreadnought, it’s not unreasonable to assume that these Hive are survivors who fled after Oryx’s death. But,” Diris gestured around the room, “nowhere have they used the symbols of Crota or Oryx. I don’t see _any_ banners.”

Idisi hummed thoughtfully. “If Oryx’s brood are on the run, though…”

“But don’t you think they would hang their God-King’s banner in their own ritual chamber?”

“Even if he’s dead?”

“He’s died before.” Diris shrugged.

Idisi suddenly snapped to attention. 

“What is it?” Diris asked, but suddenly her mind registered a sound that seemed to have already filled the room, while she wasn’t paying attention. 

She froze to listen. It was quiet and fragile, easily lost in the rustle of fabric. The sound was a tune, unassuming, winding, and strange. Diris strained to understand it. It rose and fell, rose and fell; a single line of notes without accompaniment, a sound like a hum—of reverberating bone, not of two lips pressed together.

When it stopped, Diris’s head felt empty, like an airlock suddenly opened to space. She blinked and steadied herself, glancing around. Had Alab and Arjun heard it?

Before she could ask them about it, Arjun’s voice crackled over comms. “It happened again!”

“Where’s Alab?” Diris asked.

“Here!” The hunter himself waved to them from the entrance. “I’m guarding our retreat.”

“Good idea.” Diris jumped as Idisi started out of their trance. “I’ve got it!” the Ghost announced. “Here, I’ve got a picture of the anomaly.” As Arjun jogged over, the Ghost projected a miniature copy of the room. It took Diris a moment to find the anomaly at all, but at last she noticed a strange blemish in the air not far off the ledge. A small section of reality itself had cinched like someone was pinching a length of fabric.

Diris and Arjun whirled on the spot to find it. “I can’t see anything,” Arjun said.

“Well, it’s not there anymore.” Idisi’s plates clicked. “I think it’s time to leave.”

Diris nodded. “Let’s send the artifacts to Sloane and be done with it.” She suppressed a shiver; Idisi hadn’t said anything about any sounds emanating from the gravity blip, but Diris couldn’t shake the feeling that they were connected. 

She didn’t say anything, though, as the Ghosts whizzed off to scan and transmat the pedestals and the remains of the shrieker.

“Sloane,” Arjun said, “we’re sending some more pieces your way and then—Sloane?” Static crackled in Diris’s ears and she and Arjun stared at each other.

“Diris!” Idisi shouted over their private connection, “I can’t transmat.”

The warlock tried to steady her breathing. “Outside comms are down, too.” She opened the fireteam channel. “Transmat won’t fire and we can’t hail Sloane. If the Ghosts can get full scans of our artifacts, we can get the _hell_ out of here.”

“ _Quiet!_ ” Alab hissed, through static. Even from the doorway, the signal wasn’t clean anymore. “I hear something,” he whispered. Alab took a few slow steps back toward his teammates and drew his bow, gaze fixed on the hallway. 

Diris’s mind raced. “What if the ritual didn’t fail?” she murmured to Arjun.

“But the previous fireteam cleared the nest out.”

“I _know_ , but remember: Hive rituals operate on death and sacrifice. The fireteam prevented the Hive from using Guardians’ Light, and killed a nest full of Hive in the process. Just because the ritual didn’t go to plan, doesn’t mean it failed.” Diris didn’t share the thought that made her chest tight and her blood run cold: What if it went _entirely_ to plan? What if everyone had played exactly the parts the mastermind desired for them? 

Arjun drew his rifle and knelt to get a steady view of the hallway through the scope. “Whatever the reason,” he whispered, “something is coming. You still got my back?”

“Of course.”

Idisi and Bhuta returned. Idisi’s plates chattered with nervous energy. “Scans are finished.”

“Any more blips?” Arjun asked, never moving his eye from the scope.

“No,” his Ghost answered. Her voice was soft and gentle, and nervous.

“Good.” Only then did the titan rise from his post. “Let’s move out. Alab, are we still clear?”

The hunter didn’t respond. Arjun and Diris exchanged a look and hurried quietly over the barnacled floor. 

“Alab!” Diris hissed. “Are we clear?”

His gulp was audible through comms. “I think we’re being watched.”

“Diris!” Idisi’s alarm came loud as a yell over their private connection, making the warlock jump. The Ghost dropped their volume and switched to the public channel. “I’m detecting sterile neutrinos. We’ve got Taken.”

An ear-splitting scream, otherworldly and certainly not human, boomed out of the depths of the ritual chamber. It went on longer than lungs could have possibly sustained and Diris staggered under the impact. The sound made needles of her bones. Even her blood seemed to vibrate in her veins. Her skull felt like it was shattering, and she fought for air, her lungs unable to fight the pressure of the wail.

Suddenly it stopped. The sound went on, but the pain it caused had eased. Idisi had switched on the audio dampeners, and Diris could focus again, enough to pick herself up off the floor. 

The other two were recovering , as well, and the static of their strained gasps filled the comms. Outside the shell of their helmets, the scream raged on.

“Time to go!” Idisi urged, their shell trembling. They zipped into Diris’s back pouch in anticipation of a swift departure. 

Diris risked a glance over her shoulder. From where the altar pedestal stood, something like an eye stared back at her: a spot of the true emptiness of space, bleeding into the air. It winked out of existence. All around the chamber, portals of swirling, sparking energy in black and white began to swirl open. Hive burst from the portals. No, not Hive—they were an idea of Hive, fashioned from the vacuum of the universe.

With a gasp, Diris turned back to her companions. Arjun still leaned against the wall and Diris hauled him upright. 

“Thank you. I’m alright.” He waved toward the door. “Onward.”

Alab started to protest. “We can’t see anything, there might be—”

“Whatever is in there, we’ll cope. There is _absolutely_ something out here.” He traded the sniper rifle for an auto rifle and then grabbed Alab by the back of his cape and gave him a shove. “Now _go!_ ” he thundered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This used to be a 9000 word chapter, but I have now split it in two! Check out the next chapter for the conclusion of Diris's Titan adventures.
> 
> As with so many of my posts, huge thanks to the incredible folks who organize the Ishtar Collective and its archives: https://www.ishtar-collective.net/
> 
> I drew a great deal of information (and referenced screenshots) from this comparative slideshow of Hive written language from both Destiny 1 and 2, the "Hive Language Project": https://www.slideshare.net/certainpersonio/hive-language-project-101722340


	4. The Scream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Diris's first assignment takes her and her fireteam down into Titan's Arcology, following in the footsteps of another fireteam that shut down a Hive ritual, with the mission to secure whatever artifacts they can find. But if the ritual did not fail, after all, Diris and her fireteam are walking into a trap...

Books of Sorrow, Verse XXI - battle made waves:

> He called on the Deep, saying:
> 
> I can see you in the sky. You are the waves, which are battles, and the battles are the waves. Come into this vessel I have prepared for you.
> 
> And it arrived, the Deep Itself.

With an unearthly scream resonating through the Arcology and gaps in reality swirling open, Diris and her fireteam ran. Around them the darkness came alive. The walls spit forth creatures of swirling starlight. The Taken screamed, and their screams swelled within the greater shriek, dulled by Diris’s helm but echoing on and on.

Arjun cleared the way. With a roar and a flare of sunlight he burst into flame. Hammers of raw solarfire threw back the night. Enemies before them exploded into ash as the trio ran, slipping and stumbling over Hive mess. At the base of the hole back to the surface of the Arcology, Arjun’s light dimmed. “I need to recharge,” he panted.

“Go.” Alab slung aside his bow. “I can climb faster, anyway. Just don’t leave me behind.” Blue-hot lightning ripped the air around him and Alab twirled a glowing staff of his own Light. He lunged at the first Taken thrall that emerged once more out of the dark.

With a steadying breath, Diris focused on the daylight above them. She leapt, on a burst of Light. Ropes of Hive membranes rippled under her feet, determined to throw her off, but the Light sustained her and held her steady.

“Arjun?” She looked down a hand for the titan.

“I’m right behind you, and Alab is here. He’s busy, but he’s with us.”

Two more Light-empowered bounds brought Diris to the surface.

The room was empty, as far as she could tell. The Taken had not threatened it yet. She reached a hand down for the other two. 

“Thank you,” Arjun gasped, dragging Alab up out of the hole behind him. “An acolyte caught his leg on the way up.”

They paused only for a breath. The deathsong was quieter, more contained to the lower reaches, but the Arcology shivered under the pressure. Without a word to each other, the trio staggered on, back out toward the courtyard where they had landed. Alab was limping, and leaned heavily on Arjun for support. Even over the deathsong, however, Diris could hear the smaller screams of the approaching Taken.

Diris fell back, drawing her grenade launcher. “Don’t wait up. I’ll make time for Alab’s Ghost to heal his leg.” Arjun waved without looking around.

Diris spun to face a thrall rush, slowing it with strategically-placed explosions. But the thrall kept coming, their wiry forms misty and hard to distinguish. They did not look like distinct creatures but a rushing tide. Diris’s connection to the void, somewhat frayed from the earlier impact of the deathsong, was still enough for her to block a doorway with a void field. The swarm of Taken thrall plunged into it, seared away into dust. She retreated in the small opening it gave her.

In the courtyard, Arjun and Alab had taken temporary shelter in the lee of a sleek, white planter. Alab’s Ghost worked on the hunter’s leg as Arjun crouched beside him, trying comms.

“Sloane? Come in—Sloane, do you copy?”

“Fireteam Ariel?” Sloane’s voice was crackling and weak, but it was there. “Thank the Traveler! What’s your status?”

“We’re close to the LZ. We need evac, stat.”

The party tensed at the sound of a roar down the hallway. Diris took cover behind the planter with the others, watching the doorway for more Taken. The thrall rush had broken, but whatever was coming next was much bigger. 

“What the _hell_ was that noise?” Sloane gasped. “Nevermind, we’ve got the drop ship en route. Can you hold for three minutes?”

Alab stood, stretching his mended leg. “We can certainly try.” 

Diris stared back down the corridor. Another roar echoed out into the courtyard, and then a gout of flame blasted the far door, filling it with fire. Diris racked her brain, running through the enemy classifications of the holo arena. “Knights,” she reported to the others. “We’ve got Taken knights.”

Arjun let out a long breath. “Diris, Alab and I can both keep an angle on the door if you feel comfortable holding them here.”

Diris nodded, though she could barely breathe. How, exactly, had she become the keystone of their defense? Still, she thought, as another burst of solar fire choked the opposite door, they hardly had options.

She braced. The Taken knights in the holo arena were strong, with fire spit, powerful hand-held cannons, and armor as sturdy as their Hive counterparts. They would _hurt_ , but they likely would not charge her. As long as she kept to cover, and kept them busy, Alab and Arjun should be able to fire freely on them. She traded the grenade launcher for her hand cannon. They could do this. Three minutes wasn’t _that_ long a time.

But the thing that stepped through the wall of flame toward her was not a knight. Powerful arms on a thick body, with a bulbous, grinning head. A growth where its forehead and eyes should have been glowed dangerously with the heat of starlight. 

It roared. Diris could barely breathe. The planter she hid behind suddenly felt like no cover at all.

“ _Ogre!_ ” Idisi screamed over comms. “ _We have an ogre!_ ”

Alab swore loudly, startling Diris from her trance. She still gasped for breath. Her heart beat much too fast, but she tightened a shaking hand around her revolver. 

“You are a Guardian,” Idisi was saying in her ear softly. “You are not alone. You can do this.”

Diris nodded and peered around the planter, firing three rounds at its forehead. Her hands shook too much, and they splashed into its body and limbs instead. The ogre whirled blundered around, seeking the source of its pain. Diris ducked into cover again. From behind her came a crack as Arjun took a shot. The ogre raged, screaming at a terrifying volume.

“You have shields,” Idisi went on. “The shotgun staggered ogres in training, remember? If we can keep it from attacking and keep it facing the other two, they can whittle it down.”

Diris panted with fear but glanced around the planter again. The ogre had spotted Arjun across the courtyard, and focused a beam of arc energy from its forehead. At the same time, two Taken knights strode behind it into the room. Diris pulled herself together enough to throw a grenade at the knights’ feet, halting their approach. She took aim at the ogre again, and her hand was steady enough this time to land three true shots. 

The ogre flinched, flailing its arms. An arrow punched into its forehead. Another sniper shot rang across the courtyard. 

But the knights noticed Diris. She threw herself farther into the courtyard as a volley of missiles crashed around her. Diris’s shield sparked and flickered. She skidded behind another planter. Before she could check the knights’ movements, another ogre beam blasted past her. A spray of fire blocked off the other side of her cover.

Diris took in a slow breath through her nose. “You’ve got me if I get injured, right?” she gasped to her Ghost, trading the hand cannon for her shotgun. 

“What? Yes, of course, what are you—”

Diris launched herself high over the planter.

The Taken all paused when they saw her, following Diris’s progress skyward. One of the knights had pushed almost to Diris’s previous hiding spot, and a host of Taken acolytes had flooded into the room. A few acolytes, smaller Taken armed with blasters, cocked their heads curiously and trained their guns on her. 

Diris dropped. She rolled and came up in front of the knight with her shotgun at face level. The knight had no face to grin with, only a swirling window into the heart of a star. Diris unloaded the shotgun until the skull fragmented. Then she stuffed a fistful of void Light into the gap. The knight splintered and swirled away into violet motes. Diris kicked away, rolling once more behind cover to avoid the ogre’s beam.

Cheers erupted over comms, but it was a lot harder to feel celebratory with the ogre melting the far side of Diris’s hiding spot. Fortunately, Arjun stalled the ogre with three more sniper shots.

Diris gripped her hand cannon, intending to draw the fire of the remaining knight, but something made her stop.

It had taken her a moment to notice, but there it was again: the gentle rising and falling hum, more a sensation in Diris’s skull than a true sound. 

“Diris!” Idisi’s shout brought the warlock back to herself in time to roll out of the way of a stomp from the ogre, who had circled the planter while she was distracted. Diris avoided the foot, but the impact sent her ten feet to slam into the wall. Her lungs flattened and she felt ribs snap. Ears ringing, Diris slumped to the floor.

Idisi zipped from their pouch to pump Light into the Guardian’s shattered ribs. As she worked to breathe again, Diris watched the ogre advancing across the room toward the others. At the back of her scrambled mind, the hum was rising to a pitch that made her scalp itch.

A Deathsinger, dragging night like a cloak, swept into the room. She was half again as tall as Diris, with foot-long spikes protruding from bony shoulders and skull, and a face like a black hole. And from that maw came the scream and, beneath it, the Hum.

The wizard drifted to the center of the courtyard and raised her arms. Glass windows in the surrounding buildings cracked and the ground beneath them shook harder.

 _“Diris!_ ”

The fog in her brain cleared slightly and she looked up to see Arjun breaking cover to reach her. 

A blast from the ogre caught him full in the side. It melted away his armor and much of the flesh underneath. The titan crumpled. Panicked, his Ghost Bhuta zipped over his body, softly beaming Light into the wound. Alab swiftly drew his bow. With a series of precise arrows he managed to stagger the ogre again. But the acolytes had arrayed around the room, creeping into positions of worship around their priest-Deathsinger. An acolyte noticed the glint of Bhuta’s shell and fired.

Diris gasped through her healing ribs as the Ghost richocheted into nearby vegetation. 

“Sit still, I’m almost done,” Idisi scolded Diris.

“But Arjun and Bhuta.”

“One second!”

Diris rose anyway, shuffling into motion. Her chest ached but was no longer speared with pain.

“Alright, alright! I’ve done enough.” Idisi ducked into Diris’s pack again. “Go!”

Diris sprinted for the wizard. She splattered two acolytes with a blast of void and charged through the gap.

The wizard’s proximity rattled Diris’s bones and dimmed the edges of her vision. The song-scream split the atoms of the atmosphere, cracking open more gates and drawing _something_ closer to Titan. Diris felt the Deathsinger’s ritual constellation in her chest. Her heart hammered with it, and the void well in her body swelled. Her whole body burned with the void, and the warlock could do nothing to limit the blast. 

The void bomb did not come to her hands. Silence ripped free of Diris’s body and slammed into the Deathsinger. It splintered into shards. The wave of void energy burned through the other Taken, even those newly birthed from reality’s cracks. Under the weight of the void, the ritual constellation collapsed.

Diris’s legs folded beneath her when she touched ground again. The pressure in her skull was gone, but the void bomb had taken all the energy from her limbs. It took her a moment to register the buzzing in her ears.

“—Fireteam Ariel. I repeat, come in, Fireteam Ariel.”

Had they lost Sloane again? Diris tried to form words but her mouth was too dry.

Alab responded. “Sloane, Fireteam Ariel responding. We have a Ghost down, and a Guardian critically injured. We need _immediate_ evac.”

“Is the LZ clear?”

“ _For now_ it is!” Alab shouted. “Get us out of here!”

“Copy that, Fireteam. Drop ship is coming in now.”

Diris could feel the strength in her limbs returning. Idisi must be restoring her. The Guardian dragged herself upright with the edge of a mostly-destroyed bench. Terrified of what she might see, Diris searched the courtyard for Arjun’s body. To her relief, Alab was helping Arjun to his feet.

The warlock limped over to them. Alab nodded to her as she approached. “Where’s Bhuta?” Diris managed.

Alab opened his palm. Incredibly, the Ghost’s eye flickered and glowed to life. But her shell was partially destroyed.

The whirr of an engine grew to a roar over head. Diris looked up at the heavy drop ship swopping in over the buildings. She could have cried as Idisi activated the transmat.

The trio nearly collapsed as each of them materialized and dropped to the floor of the hold. Alab rapped his knuckles on the wall of the cockpit. “Let’s go!” The ship jolted and they were away. Diris helped Arjun to a seat.

“I’m alright,” he groaned, waving her off. “Bhuta?”

“I’m here!” she squeaked. The Ghost listed as she flew, weighted by the blasted and melted portions of her shell, but she still flew under her own steam, and Arjun released a sigh, letting his head fall into her hands. They switched to private comms and Diris left them to it, checking the ship’s progress on the monitor. A few Taken stragglers apparently remained, and had wandered aimlessly into the courtyard. They watched the ship disappearing as their forms gave way, unable to sustain themselves and winking one-by-one out of existence once more.

“How are you feeling?” Idisi asked.

Diris considered the question for a moment. “I have too many answers to that.” She glanced at Bhuta and her partially destroyed shell. “How are _you_?” Diris asked.

The Ghost shrugged, triangular plates shuffling. “Shaken, for a lot of reasons. But we’re _here_ , and we have a lot to analyze.”

Diris agreed. “Pull up the scans of that pedestal from the ritual chamber, please.” She collapsed into a nearby seat. 

Idisi floated close, projecting a miniature copy of the pedestal. “What are you looking for?”

“Ikora asked us to find the purpose of the ritual.”

The Ghost sighed. “It’s going to be difficult if you are trying to read that from the pedestal. Hive runes are hardly clear in the first place, and these are…not normal.”

“Right.” Instead of the even lines of glyphs Diris had become accustomed to while reading about the Court of Oryx, these were branding and twisting, joined a split by other runes, all focused around a central line, into other chains of language. But something else nagged at Diris: where had it all _come_ from? Where had the force that could, at the very least _use_ the Taken, if not create more, come from? Oryx, their king and creator, was dead. That should be the end of the matter. “Idisi, can you map out the locations of all the ritual elements, including all of the pieces that the previous fireteam reported?”

“It won’t be perfect, since we didn’t see them all ourselves, but I can extrapolate. One moment, collating.” The Ghost’s eye flickered, like a human’s eyes glazing over. After a moment, they snapped back to attention. Idisi projected a new model and Diris leaned forward to examine it. There had been crystal pedestals and three corresponding pedestals for void light, all arrayed around the capstone to channel energy into the ritual. It reminded her of a radio receiver disk.

The Hive knew well the power of geometry, of the intense strength, especially, of combined gravitational fields. Could the ritual connect to another set of pedestals arranged elsewhere. Did the ritual align to a celestial body?

“Idisi, please track the orientation of the central capstone at the time the ritual took place in relation to the nearest celestial bodies.”

“This is space we’re talking about, when you say ‘near’…”

Diris shrugged. “Let’s start with, ‘within the Solar System.’”

Idisi clicked through calculations. “Here it is. No planets _or_ moons fit the alignment.”

“Nothing? Not even Saturn?”

“As you know, Titan is tidally locked with Saturn. The angle of the ritual is therefore consistent, and the ritual alignment actually just narrowly misses the planet itself. It only passes through the rings.”

Diris frowned. “You don’t suppose there’s a particularly large asteroid—”

They both froze. Idisi needed no instruction. “I’m checking, I’m checking.” In a second, they nodded. Their voice modulator quivered. “The Dreadnought would have been in alignment at the time of the ritual.”

They sighed together. Of course; if the Taken were involved, the Taken King’s ship would be the place to go.

“We should tell Ikora,” Idisi whispered.

But Diris shook her head. “It’s an important coincidence, but what do I know? I’m still just New Light. All we’ve really got is guesses and suspicion. I think she would say it ‘merits further analysis.’”

“‘Analysis’ is not investigating a possible second half of the ritual on the Dreadnought, it’s painstakingly translating each of the ritual pieces.”

“Which is not without merit.”

“It could take months!”

“Correct.”

“So what do we do next?”

Diris sat back in her seat. “We will submit a report with our suspicions and recommendations for further analysis.”

“And then?”

Ghost and Guardian exchanged a look. “Then, we investigate the Dreadnought,” Diris whispered. She did not mention the other thing that worried her: the song, the strange tune that she had heard at first in the ritual chamber, and then again underneath the weight of the Deathsinger’s scream. It bothered Diris that no one else seemed to have heard it. And it bothered her that the song was not part of the scream itself—if the song was a weapon, as the scream was, it’s purpose was not clear.

Diris and Idisi looked up as the ship slowed. The engines spun down and stopped, and the pilot emerged from the cockpit. 

“You made it! Welcome back to the Rig. Sloane is waiting for you inside.”

A ramp opened for them to disembark. Diris was surprised at how happy she was not to have to transmat again; disappearing into a cloud of sparks and base atoms unnerved her every time. She crossed the ship to help Arjun to his feet, but he stood himself without issue.

“Bhuta is fine! A little banged up, yes, but she healed me without a problem, now that we’ve had a safe moment for it.”

“I’m glad to hear you’re both okay.”

Alab clapped Arjun on the shoulder as he passed, and the three of them crossed together from the ship into the briefing room. 

Diris groaned with satisfaction as she removed her helmet, exchanging the stale oxygen of her suit for the recycled air of the research station. She shook out her hair and gave her scalp a good scratch. 

Sloane was pouring over Arjun and Bhuta in a panic. She had, after all, been told there was a Ghost down, and she was visibly relieved to see that they had lost no one. She herself looked much the worse for a heart attack or two, and much of her hair stood at odd angles, presumably where she had combed her fingers through it. At last she turned to the full group. “Welcome back, Fireteam Ariel.”

“Thank you, Commander!” Arjun said. Diris blinked. She had never heard his unmodulated voice. He and Alab had followed Diris’s example and both settled, unmasked, at the table. Arjun’s glossy curls were slightly flattened from his helmet. His eyes were a warm, deep brown that matched his hair, crinkling with a smile out off a gentle brown face. Alab looked like Commander Zavala, bald head swimming with light that was the soft purple of dusk.

Diris busied herself with taking a seat. It was rude to stare.

“Alright, team, give me the rundown,” Sloane said, leaning forward and pressing her hands together on the table.

Arjun led the presentation, aided by Bhuta and Idisi. At its conclusion, Sloane groaned. “So on top of everything else, I’ve got Taken wandering my Rig?”

Idisi shook a “no.” “The source of their presence, whatever it is, appears to be cut off. As we departed, Diris and I saw the remaining Taken disappearing.”

“Do they…do that?” Sloane asked. “Simply disappear?”

“Apparently.”

Sloane ran a hand through her hair. “What are your conclusions? What can you tell us about the ritual?”

A silent argument ensued between Idisi and Diris, and eventually the Guardian answered. “We are not prepared to offer final answers yet. There is a lot of information to digest, a lot of material to translate, and we do not want to make baseless claims.”

Sloane frowned. “But what if the Taken return, or the Hive try the ritual again?”

“It seems likely that the ritual was, to a minor degree, successful in the first place. The Guardians’ Light could not be consumed, but many Hive certainly were. And, as Idisi mentioned, the source seems to have closed off. Whatever was needed on this moon, I believe, has been obtained.”

“Well…okay, I’m not sure I understand fully, and I’ll look forward to reading your full report, but for now I’ll take your word for it. And we’ll keep an ear to the ground for any unusual movements.”

Sloane stood and stretched. “Thank you for your hard work, Guardians. We have some cots if sleeping is to your taste. Otherwise, I’ll make sure our new artifacts get to the right people. Dismissed.”

The trio stood and saluted.

Diris nodded immediately to Idisi and replaced her helmet. Alab met them at the door. Neither he nor Diris said anything, but exchanged nods. Inside her helmet, Diris smiled—she could see a measure of respect in the man’s gesture.

From over her shoulder, though, Arjun called, “Wait up!” He had not replaced his helmet and seemed ready to take Sloane’s suggestion of a nap. “We’re going to stick around while Bhuta gets fitted for her new shell. Where are you headed off to so fast?” His eyes were friendly and open, his smile easy. 

“Idisi and I have to send our report to Ikora, and then we have a bit more research to do.”

“On the ritual?”

Diris nodded.

Arjun cocked his head to one side. “You think there’s more to this?”

“We have…conjectures. The presence of Taken doesn’t quite sit right with me.”

“And you said there was something unusual about the glyphs.” Arjun hmm’d in agreement. “Right then, where are we headed?”

Diris blinked at him. Fortunately, Idisi responded in her stead. “We have something to check out on the Dreadnought. You should stay and wait for Bhuta. We’ll be fine.”

Arjun snorted. “No, I don’t think so. You should have people with you. Let me just hail Zed and we can all—”

“No, thank you.” Diris shook her head. “We do not anticipate having to go very far.”

The titan raised his eyebrows. “But you will, won’t you? If it’s necessary. I’m not saying you need babysitters, just backup.”

Diris let out a long breath through her nose. “How about this—you wait here and get some rest while Bhuta gets her new shell fitted. By the time you make it to the Dreadnought, we’ll likely be on the verge of something dangerous again.”

Arjun laughed. “Yes, alright. That seems fair enough.” He stepped away as the door hissed open. “Safe travels.”

As soon as it slid closed behind them again, Diris set off at a run. 

“Why are we running?” Idisi asked, zipping along beside the Guardian.

“Bring the ship around, please. Arjun almost died in there. If we’re going to get into trouble, I want us to be too far in for Arjun to join us.” And, she thought, running over the curious tune once more in her mind, I need more time to understand what kind of danger we’re dealing with.

Idisi watched her disapprovingly, but in a moment their jump ship engines roared as it drew up alongside them. With a twinkle of transmat particles and a blaze of fuel, they set off for the rings of Saturn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This used to be a 9000 word chapter, but I have now split it in two! Check out the previous chapter for the introduction to Diris's Titan adventures.
> 
> As with so many of my posts, huge thanks to the incredible folks who organize the Ishtar Collective and its archives: https://www.ishtar-collective.net/
> 
> I drew a great deal of information (and referenced screenshots) from this comparative slideshow of Hive written language from both Destiny 1 and 2, the "Hive Language Project": https://www.slideshare.net/certainpersonio/hive-language-project-101722340


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